In his first year of high school, Su Heng was the worst kind of boy in the entire school.
He smoked, got into fights, skipped class, and was prickly all over. Even the teachers could hardly be bothered to look at him.
Then one afternoon, he saw Gong Qingxiao on a tree-lined path.
She walked quietly through the sunlight with books in her arms, like a beam of light so pure it seemed unreal.
After that one glance, Su Heng's life began to veer uncontrollably in another direction.
He quit smoking, cut ties with the friends who were wasting their lives, and slowly picked up his textbooks. He climbed from the bottom of his class and went from a troublemaker everyone looked down on to a student who made it into the advanced class.
Everyone thought he'd suddenly turned over a new leaf.
Only he knew he wasn't trying to win.
He just wanted to be a little closer to her.
He wanted to stand before her one day with his head held high and say, without a trace of embarrassment:
"Hello, I'm Su Heng. Could we get to know each other?"
But just as he was finally about to catch up to that beam of light, rumors about his past, the mess his father had left behind, and the pitying, cutting looks of those around him dragged him back into the mud once more.
What he feared most wasn't being looked down on.
It was her hearing those terrible things too.
This is a secret crush that begins in the height of summer and lasts for many years.
It's also the story of a boy desperately pulling himself out of the abyss, all so he can get closer to one person.
